Norma MacDonald, one of Davis’s grandchildren, said after Wednesday’s ceremony held at Miners Memorial Park in Sydney Mines that she believes there should be a concerted effort to educate children on the importance of remembering the struggles of those who came before them.

The miners and others who attend the ceremony are getting older, MacDonald said, adding that many people aren’t able to leave work to attend the service and crowds aren’t as large as they once were. She said she would like for the school board to institute a June 11 holiday for students, or at least incorporate the story behind Davis Day more into the curriculum and to hold remembrance services.

“How are they going to know about it if they’re not here?” MacDonald said.

“After people are older and move on, the kids are the ones who are coming now,” added her son Sheldon. “How are they going to be aware of it? You would see it fizzle out.”

MacDonald’s sister, Evelyn McLeod, said she and her siblings have attended the event since they were children. When the mines closed, she said she feared Davis Day commemorations would fade, but noted the United Mine Workers of America pledged to keep it going.

“I think they fought so hard for what they had gotten for the coal miners, my grandfather, that people today kept it up and the UMW kept it up,” McLeod said. “They were really for it and we made sure that they kept it in the union even when the coal mines closed. I have all the faith in the world that those people will keep it going.

“I’m telling you, I never thought I’d be here for the 90th, but I’m going to be here, I hope.”

McLeod said the family is now trying to get its youngest members ones involved, and some of Davis’ great-great-grandchildren have recently done school reports on him.

MacDonald said she was sad as she began to walk away from the ceremony, noting the annual ceremony always makes her think of her mother, Evelyn.

“We always miss our mother a lot today,” MacDonald said. “It was so important to her.”

Tommy Gillis, president of Local 2183 of the United Mine Workers of America, said it is important to remember Davis each year because he made the ultimate sacrifice for his fellow workers. He also called on people to remember the RCMP officers killed on the job last week in Moncton, Canadian soldiers who died in Afghanistan and also those who came home only to take their own lives because they didn’t get the support they needed when they returned home.

Wendy Fraser-MacIntyre attends the Davis Day ceremony every year to honour her brother Arthur, who was killed by falling stone in a mining accident at age 19 on Sept. 28, 1964, after less than a week on the job.

“He didn’t even get to collect a paycheque,” Fraser-MacIntyre said, adding her father didn’t get any time off of work to grieve the loss of his son.

“We had 20 in our family, so he had to get back to work to feed us.”

The desire to mark Davis Day endures because mining runs so deep in the communities where the pits operated, Fraser-MacIntyre said.

“With it being a mining town, the full community has been touched forever by it, everybody, the mining towns — New Waterford, Glace Bay and here — the miners were the run of the town.”

Ed Yankavich, international vice-president District 2 United Mine Workers of America, spoke about the intense connection that miners feel with the song “Working Man,” written by Rita MacNeil and performed at Wednesday’s service by the Men of the Deeps.

“It’s unique in it touches you in such a way if you’re a miner … you remember the first day you went in the pit, that’s what I remember,” Yankavich said.

“You remember about all the fun you had with all the guys, joking and laughing in the dinner hall, you remember all the close calls you had, where if it hadn’t been for the grace of God you would have perished. You remember the friends that did die.

Every miner who hears that song knows and can look at each other and say, ‘We know what we did.’”

Yankavich noted Davis was not the only miner to be killed in North America as part of miners’s struggles for better working conditions, with no one ever being held to account for their deaths.

“That never stopped that generation, our forefathers, to continue to fight to bring us the United Mine Workers of America and safety and a decent wage,” he said.